Space probe to reveal secrets of the solar system

A Sudbury businessman has this week spoken of his involvement in the European Space Agency’s space probe launch.

ESA launched the Gaia satellite from French Guiana last Thursday, on a five-year mission to map the positions and movement of around one billion objects in our galaxy.

It will uncover tens of thousands of previously unseen objects, including asteroids in our solar system, planets around nearby stars, and exploding stars – supernovas – in other galaxies.

It is hoped the result will be the most detailed map of the Milky Way ever produced, allowing astronomers to determine the origin and the evolution of our galaxy.

Jon Kemp, who lives in Belle Vue Road, works at e2v in Chelmsford, as a business unit manager in the science department.

His company was awarded a 20million Euro contract to design and manufacture 106 image sensors which will act as the “eyes” of the satellite’s camera. The camera is the most powerful ever built and can pick up a human hair from 1,000 miles away.

“The image sensors receive light and turn it into an electronic signal,” said Jon.

The company’s specialist technology skills were sought out as long ago as 1997. “ESA started talking to us before it started building the satellite because it knew this was one of the biggest challenges of the mission,” said Jon.

e2v, based in Waterhouse Lane, had previously supplied two image sensors to the upgrade project for the Hubble spacecraft, so producing 106 for one project was a major undertaking for the firm.

Jon, 35, who has two young daughters, Hannah and Esther, said: “It was not just the quantity that was a big challenge.

“We also had to make sure each one was up to space standards, which means they have to be able to pass radiation, shaking and temperature tests.”

In two weeks, the satellite will be turned on and scientists will know if it has reached its destination. But it will be two years before they get any data back.

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

Suffolk Free Press provides news, events and sport features from the Sudbury area. For the best up to date information relating to Sudbury and the surrounding areas visit us at Suffolk Free Press regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website Suffolk Free Press requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.